Saturday, May 2, 2015

One of towering figures of the post-BeBop Jazz landscape, the 'saxophone colossus' Peter Brötzmann, who graced cover of the The Wire twice last year with a series of bold and impassioned interviews as well as a Primer for the magazine, is back at Seattle Art Museum with two other major players in modern Jazz. The
legendary percussionist for many of the groundbreaking albums of the
last four decades, Hamid Drake, and upright bassist and Jazz polymath, William Parker as part of Earshot Jazz' excellent Spring season programming. An ideal introduction to the man and his work can be had in Bernard Josse's, "Soldier of the Road" on Peter Brötzmann and his role as a pivotal figure in shaping the contemporary Euro Free Jazz scene. It does exactly what a music docu should do; iterate the
cultural/political context that gave birth to he movement, explore it's
various philosophies, depict the movement's cast of major players and
show them in action. Namely Brötzmann with a rotating cast spanning half
a century of players and collaborators. From his accounting his
earliest childhood memories of German occupied Prussia and then Russian
occupied Prussia and at a young teenage year, realizing his love of art
stemming from a freedom that opposed the Nationalism and Fascism that
inspired the war. Later to his taking up the Clarinet and painting and packing
himself off to art school... only to land right in the middle of the
BeBop and Hard Bop scene and then later at the vanguard of the Free
Jazz movement.

And then the 60's hit and there's not only players on both sides of the
Atlantic, but audiences and collaborators from England, to France to
Belgium to Germany and a inquisitive young audience, who might not
necessarily 'get it' but are looking for the unheard and the liberating.
Ad to that the corresponding movements in the visual arts, notably Fluxus and Brötzmann is right there in the fray of things making a strong
connection with the ethos of the movement. From the Punk Rock noise and
fury of the Machine Gun albums to the equally powerful 80's lineup that was Last Exit to his later years, still as fiery, still as invested, still blasting
away on his horn. But as the documentary depicts, with an equilibrium
tempered by his lifelong love of walks in nature, photography, botany
and his deep passion for isolated individual time in the studio working
on graphic works and abstract landscape painting very much of the German Neo-Expressionist school. All
of this balanced with time spent touring and collaborating with some of
the fieriest, loudest, most dynamic and adventurous players in the
world; Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, Fred Van Hove, Paal Nilsen-Love, Joe McPhee, Michael Wertmüller, Michael Zerang, Johannes Bauer... most of whom now make up Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet.
This is how one weathers decades, becomes all bearded and grey and
remains a fiery passion with depths of deep contemplation and at the
front of a vanguard most of the world can't even begin to approach. As a
live, physical, auditory performance he transcends all the words said
and written above. By far.

Documenting adventures in explorative modern music, film, visual art, architecture, design and performance. Regardless of genre, class or style. Essentially thoughts, reflections and criticism on non-commercial contemporary artforms that come to my attention. Either through witnessing them here in my home city, while traveling abroad, or the journalistic work of others. As well as occasional interjections of existential, experiential, cultural or political enthusiasms and consternations that may crop up along the way. ie; Life.